From GSP

Triple Olympic champion at the Athens Olympics in 2004, Catalina Ponor, starting April 1, will give up her monthly pension. The gymnast, who in the last five years has come back twice to artistic gymnastics, will join the Olympic gymnastics team that is training at Izvorani, starting this week.

“The first discussion on a possible return to the gymnastics team for Catalina was held in December 2010. At that time I gave her a period of four months to come back to a physical condition that would allow her to integrate much faster in training. She has achieved this goal and we will be expecting her to come to Izvorani by April 1 “Mariana Bitang said for gsp.ro.

The gesture of the athlete to return to competitive activity will, sadly, seriously affect her income. Due to her impressive medal record, being an Olympic and European gold medalist, Ponor is one of the only Romanian sportswomen who receives a maximum salary of over 60 million lei. By law, when an athlete returns to training, he/she is forced to give up on their pension. Therefore, starting from April 1, Catalina Ponor will no longer receive any of that money. However, as a component of the women’s Olympic gymnastics team, she will receive compensation amount of up to 10 million lei.

Ponor will come back to the team on the day the team lead by Mariana Bitang and Octavian Bellu will leave for Berlin, where starting from April 4, the European Championships will debut.

Bitang: “It is unreasonable for the compensation to be much less than the rent!”

Women’s Olympic gymnastics team coach, Mariana Bitang, believes that the current rules are exagerated and they must be reviewed. ” Catalina Ponor’s comeback to the team brings out these legislative abnormalities of Romanian sports. This girl is coming back to do professional sports and as a reward, she gets no money in return, ” Bitang said. ” It’s unreasonable for the compensation to be less than a pension. Athletes are not encourage at all with such measures. It would me more acceptable if the compensation was at a more attractive value than the rent because otherwise, athletes are not encouraged to do sports, but to leave sports.”

From DigiSport:

“I hope to be in the history books, at the age of 23. If I am going to be an important part in the team, I hope I can be at the world championships in Tokyo, but my main goal for the moment is the Olympics” (Catalina Ponor)

“The way I see her, eager to compete, I think she will make it. She has experience, her physical potential is on the way of being improved on, and on the technical side we have to wait and see on while on our way what can be done”. (Octavian Bellu)

Claudiu